ArchivedLogs:Love

Love
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jax	2015-01-07 Set a couple hours after sleep.
Location <NYC> Candyland - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
The stairs lead up into a landing hall, bright as well with a set of bay windows and a wide cushion-strewn ledge beneath them at its far end. To the right of the landing the first doorway opens into the bathroom, warmly coloured in yellows and reds and sandy tiles; its large bathtub-shower also holds a mosaic on one wall, strange fire-creatures and manticores echoed in the small fiery faeries sprinkled at sporadic intervals around the rest of the room. Past the bathroom on the right-hand side is a smaller door into a linen closet before the actual door into Spencer's bedroom. Spencer's sturdy furniture set has been designed with rambunctious children in mind, most of its structure climbable with a loft-bed connected by a short tunnel to an also-lofted reading nook with a sliding door to turn it into its own private cave; the desk and dresser sit beneath the bed and there is a shelving unit beneath the platform that serves also as steps up into it. A slide down off the bed falls down into large squishy beanbag and the whole of the structure has been designed and painted reminiscent of a spaceship, a theme echoed in the way the closet doors have been painted to look like the TARDIS. On the left-hand side the first door leads into the master bedroom, bright-lit not just from its huge windows and skylight but from a rather exorbitant overabundance of lamps. It's colourful in here, the hand-crafted wood furniture (king bed against the left-hand wall, pair of small nightstands to either side of it, a pair of dressers flanking the closet on the right, a large desk with a multitude of drawers and shelves along the back) cheerfully painted, the walls home to plentiful artwork, brightly coloured glass figurines scattered around the shelves and stained-glass suncatchers hanging in the windows. One set of windows leads out onto a balcony, stretching out to share with the guest bedroom adjacent; it's set up for /lounging/, a large hammock at one side, a pair of hanging net chairs flanking the table on the other. Next to the master bedroom is the smaller guest bedroom, sunny-yellow and furnished with queen bed, dresser, a small desk of its own; doors here lead out into the balcony as well. At the end of the hallway shortly before the window nook, a hatch in the ceiling drops down a rope-ladder that leads up into the tiny attic-space; not so much a proper /floor/ as it is a sloped-ceiling nook of space beneath the roof, it nevertheless has its own circular window and skylights and rather than left unfinished it's been furnished with beanbag and folded futon-mattress and a tiny low table with drawers tucked beneath it. The house is quiet, this late at night. Obie curled up by the bedside in a large pillowy dogbed. Spencer in bed asleep for hours now. Micah and Egg -- Well, who knows. The bedroom door is closed, and Jax's energy levels lately have not been nearly high enough to /feel/ into the guest room and see what might be going on in there. In here it is bright. Bright, bright, bright, a pair of sunlamps switched on together with a wealth of other lights. Even the dragonfly-shaped string lights over the windows and the little stained-glass-cross nightlight by the bed. Jax has been in bed, stripped down to boxers but with an enormous pile of blankets to ward off the cold. Which hasn't stopped his shivering. Curled up into a ball on his side, fingers twitching against the bedsheets. His eye is closed but his racing thoughts are a clear enough indicator he isn't asleep, hasn't been asleep yet tonight, jangling loud and -- murkier than usual, though still a little on the too-bright side of the spectrum. Disjointed fragment-images of monsters tearing Spencer's throat out, of the twins older and far away, of the house cold and dark and empty, of a tiny skinny gargoyle-baby growing thinner and wasting away. His thoughts are set against a backdrop of nausea, exhaustion, guilt, worry, knotting and unraveling and knotting again. Hive's mental presence has been just about as conspicuously absent as his physical one, the past couple weeks, but all his silence does not mean he can't still /hear/. Clear and loud and the jangling discord of Jax's mind is, eventually, met with a response. Slow and cautious as though not entirely sure of his welcome, a mental bump of pressure. Tap? Nudge? Jax's breath catches, mind tightening up reflexively. He burrows beneath the blankets as though this will /do/ something against telepathic eavesdropping, pulling the covers up over his head. But a moment later he relaxes -- mentally if not physically -- another surge of worry flaring up. << Miss you. >> Beneath that, other questions wanting to surface. /How/ is Hive doing why has he disappeared can't they see him again before he dies argh. There's a moment of quiet, after this. Then a slow coiling of Hive's mind around Jax's. Twining around, curling mental tendrils down into that chaos. << Yeah. >> He doesn't answer these questions, though. Just touches lightly against them and moves on: << Not sleeping. Not eating. Gonna worry yourself to fucking death, you keep this up. >> Jax's mind wants to tense against the habitual pain of Hive's, but with a grit of teeth he forces himself to relax again. Slow and quiet, opening up a world of sick-unhappy feelings to Hive's questing mental fingers. << Haven't been hungry. Can't sleep. Tried but. Too much -- >> Another surge of worry. About driving off the pups. About endangering his family. About /losing/ his family. About not having the slightest idea how to care for a small gargoyle. About whether or not he's broken somehow because even complete strangers seem to react to Eridani as though they're a sweet gorgeous cherub and all he can think is how it will probably be a matter of months before they're strong enough to pose a serious danger to Obie and Spence and not much longer until they're stronger than he and Micah and they're almost certainly be strong enough to kill long before the age when most human children have developed things like empathy and compassion and if they have a bloodthirst like Dusk's to contend with it'll be even more of a struggle to ever develop those things and how on earth is he even going to begin helping them have a life. About how unfair it is to Eridani that instead of love already they're just getting worry and stress and wondering how to mitigate danger and he's -- << ... so not cut out. To be a father. >> Hive's mind finishes its coiling, wrapped snug and firm around Jax's. Absorbing all these thoughts and stresses, taking them in and turning them over thoughtfully before setting them back where they were. << S'a crock of bullshit. You've been a goddamn amazing father. You really should /talk/ to your husband about all this, you know. >> << So amazing I drove my kids away from the only family they've ever had. >> Jax curls in on himself, mental tone bitter. He actually hisses, a short sharp breath expelled through his teeth, at the suggestion to talk to Micah. << Right. No. How am I supposed to talk to him? He doesn't get it. Even /before/ Egg was born he was just all squee over them. And from the second they /were/ born it was like, oh, so cute, they just /tried to eat Horus's face/. Adorable. How precious. Like this isn't a big deal. Like it's not going to be /dangerous/ and a constant struggle. It's like he /forgets/ that even with years of socializing /before/ manifesting Dusk struggles with this /all the time/ and -- and tried to /kill me/. Or like it just doesn't /matter/? I don't know. >> Jax's fingers are curling tightly into the sheets, but though there's a brief dimming of lights around the room there's nothing past this. Too burned-out to even manage the usual flare-ups that come with strong surges of emotion. Silver lining, perhaps. It's quieter, heavy, guilty, in continuation: << How could I /possibly/ talk to him when all I got is stress an' worry an' screwing everything up an' all he's got is love. Slike /magically/ overnight that was enough to even make him somehow good at things he wasn't before and I'm just getting worse and worse at /everything/ while he's the /only/ new parent I've known in the /history of ever/ to magically intuitively be perfectly on top'a everything. An' he shouldn't /have/ to feel /bad/ about that. Goblin deserves to be loved. I jus' -- >> Quieter, heavier, /sicker/: << can't. Do that. >> << All the time, >> Hive agrees, and here it comes with a mental impression. Dusk's mind, warm and bright and passionate and curious layered over a gnawing red backdrop of hunger, of want, of vicious sharp-fanged sharp-clawed bloodlust scratch-scratch-scratching at the surface as he bats it back down. << I hear him and it's never peaceful. >> As this fades it shifts into a different mind, less familiar to Jax, never yet shared in mind-space. An inchoate sort of curiosity shifting into a sharper (needle-teethed) (sharp-taloned) hunger filling up their senses. << You're fucking stupid, though. If you think you don't have /every/ goddamn bit as much love -- the fuck do you think love is, warm fuzzy happy cuddly feelings? Give fucking Malthus a kitten I'm sure he'd have had some of those. >> Now there are images, again. Shane fresh out of Prometheus, savage and snarling, attacking anyone who got close. Jax coming, day after day, weathering teeth and claws, arms shredding sometimes, bringing food. Sitting and reading. Talking to him about everything and nothing until he slowly became more acclimatized again to /people/. << You feel warm and fuzzy through all that? >> It takes Jax a moment to process the other-mind feelings shared with him, a bit /longer/ to identify them -- and when understanding comes it comes with a shudder. A choking back of sudden-bile rising in his throat. He curls his legs up tighter against his chest, shaking his head as his mind is pulled reluctantly back to Shane's re-socialization process. One hand traces fingers against the other forearm, as though he might still feel scars many-years-old and long since healed away. << No, >> he admits heavily. << Mostly just scared. Exhausted. Angry, sometimes. Sick, sometimes. >> Light mental touches press up against those same emotions swirling through Jax's mind now. Sick and angry and exhausted and scared. << Love isn't about what you're /feeling/. Love is about what you /choose/ to do anyway. You didn't /feel/ warm and fuzzy and cuddly when Shane was tearing your goddamn arms open, you just helped him /anyway/. You don't /feel/ warm and fuzzy with a fucking gargoyle-monster that might eat you, but you opened a fucking /vein/ for them /anyway/. >> The coils of mental touch around Jax's mind firm up, bolstering, stronger. << And yeah, they'll need cuddly. But they'll need hard and /practical/ too or life's gonna be really fucking difficult for them when they've killed their older brother before they're even old enough to know what that means. So let Micah handle the cuddling. And don't feel bad about replacing the fucking doors with stronger ones. You'll need it. >> Jax /slumps/ against that stronger presence, a kind of exhausted collapse that -- contrastingly with his crumbling mental state comes with getting /up/, physically. Rolling up out of bed, setting feet quietly on the floor as he starts to (rather unsteadily, head swimming) get dressed in layers for the freezing night outside. << Maybe. >> He doesn't sound terribly convinced, thinking of speaking with Flicker about furniture but Micah subsequently taking over on the planning of it. Practical. << I'm sure he can handle both halves of everything just fine. >> << You going out? >> Hive doesn't sound particularly approving or disapproving. Curious. << I can't be here right now. >> Tucking undershirt shakily into pants. Zipping up jeans with fumbling fingers. << It's fine. I'll be back in time to make breakfast. >> << People love you too, you know. >> There's a tired quality to Hive's words with this, now. A reluctance to let go. << You don't always have to -- >> << Carry this alone? >> Jax cuts in, something a little darkly amused slicing through the previous storm of unhappy. << Y'ever planning on coming out of your basement? Maybe there's only jus' so much love t'go around, any given time. Maybe we're usin' it all elsewhere for now. >> In answer to this question there's quiet. Slowly, an uncoiling of mind, pressure slipping off of Jax's and fading away. Jax stumbles, outwardly, catching himself against his closet door with this sudden loss of mental companionship. He exhales, sharp and heavy, tugging a sweatshirt from the closet and leaving Obie asleep in the dogbed as he slips quietly out of the bedroom, closing the door behind himself and heading down the stairs.